John Donne, Lady Mary Wroth, John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, John Dryden, and Katherine Philips. A biographical timeline is provided for each poet, and detailed annotations accompany the poems.

This Norton Critical Edition features twenty-nine poets writing from the accession of James I in 1603 to the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a time of political, religious, and social turmoil that produced some of the greatest poetry in the English language. Building on previous Norton Critical Editions, this volume offers updated selections by Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and eighteen other poets essential to understanding seventeenth-century British literature. It also presents freshly edited poems by Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, Lady Mary Wroth, John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, John Dryden, and Katherine Philips. A biographical timeline is provided for each poet, and detailed annotations accompany the poems.

"Criticism" is divided into two sections. The first, "Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Criticism," gathers commentary by contemporary poets and biographers, among them Ben Jonson and Samuel Johnson.The second, "Recent Criticism," assembles critical assessments of the poets and the period by H. Auden, Eavan Boland, T. S. Eliot,William Empson, Gerald Hammond, Aldous Huxley, William Kerrigan,Leah Marcus, and Jane] Mueller, among others.

A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Preface

The Texts of the Poms

Criticism

Select Bibliography

Index